Have you heard? There's a new supergroup in town! Try putting Nick Zinner (Yeah Yeah Yeahs), Blood Brothers' Jordan Blilie and Cody Votolato PLUS noise monsters JP and Gabe Serbian from The Locust together in a box and here is what comes out the other end: Head Wound City describes their ways through their new self-titled EP...
1. RADICAL FRIENDS
Gabe: I like "Radical Friends" cause I remember we got the song title from this picture that Nick had. It was a picture of monkey wearing a t-shirt that said "Radical Friends". The best part was he had his arm around a panda bear. How cute is that shit? Oh yeah, we all got "Radical Friends" tattoos. That's pretty sick.
2. I'M A TAXIDERMIST I'LL STUFF ANYTHING
Jordan: I think we got this song name from a bumper sticker in a teen movie. Some frat house or something. Anyway, I was writing about hyper-male, bro lust. The idea of dumping out your feelings, compassion, etc. to go out and get laid. Not a celebration by any means, more of a condemnation. I was kinda going for something similar to that Dead Kennedy's song, "Terminal Preppy" as far as the sarcastic, mocking tone and everything.
3. PRICK CLASS
Nick: "Prick Class" was the first song we wrote. It's interesting for me because each section was written and structured chronologically, like, the first part is the first thing we all played together. We'd rock out on that until it felt right, then move on to the next section, and then the next, and a song was born.
4. STREET COLLEGE
Gabe: The song "Street College" got its name when I was driving the dudes to the practice space one rainy afternoon. We were listening to NPR or something and they were interviewing James Hatfield. The shit that came out of that guys mouth was so funny but when he actually said he graduated from Street College we lost it. I almost crashed. What an asshole!!
5. NEW SOAK FOR OUR EMPTY POCKET
Jordan: I really like the long intro that starts this one out. The space it creates is a breath of fresh air of sorts. I tried to sing over it and failed miserably. But that's okay, my voice was getting pretty torn up raw at this point. I wrote the lyrics with my girlfriend in mind. Her body's failing her, and I was thinking about how incredibly frustrating that's gotta be for a person.
6. THRASH ZOO
JP: I remember when we first started rehearsing, we were all not really sure where to take things musically. At some point Cody had stopped playing and asked Gabe if he could not use double kick. Gabe's response was priceless. He just sat there behind the drum set super straight-faced, with no reaction. Seconds passed and eventually Cody said, "Well, OK, lets move on." It was amazing. Telling Gabe to lose the double kick is like telling a pervert not to jerk off. I'm amazed with Jordan's writing on this album. "Radical Friends" and "Thrash Zoo" are such amazing titles and the words that accompany the tracks are great. He really showed that he is a superior lyricist and vocalist (hint hint).
7. MICHAEL J. FUX FEAT. GNARLS IN CHARGE
Nick: I was in Tokyo before I went to San Diego for the HWC project. In Harajuku, there's a 5 storey building called "LaForet" where each floor has about 20 clothes stores from up-and-coming designers. I went in there during "sale week", and it was absolute pandemonium - 5 girls with megaphones in front of every store screaming out sales slogans, and about 1000 Japanese kids lined up, and also running around these narrow corridors. Anyways, I made an audio recording of that, and that's the sound we looped at the end of the song. When we played that song live, we stretched the end out to 10 minutes.